The cash award in May, $10,000, was hardly substantial in an industry in which hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on clinical trials alone to bring a new drug to market. But for Databean L.L.C., a contract research organization carving a niche serving small, innovative start-ups among the giants of the life sciences industry, delivering the winning business pitch at the Westchester County Association”™s inaugural Health Tech conference could also bring access to potential clients and partners in Westchester County”™s biotech cluster.
“The $10,000 is very nice,” said Nuala Ronan, Databean”™s founder and managing partner, in a spring interview at the company”™s office loft space in a converted factory at 31 South St. in Mount Vernon. For an outside contractor that has relied on word of mouth and contacts in the field, “It will allow us to initiate marketing goals,” she said. The company, she said, has developed an aggressive marketing plan.
With the cash award, Databean also was added to the WCA”™s Blueprint Accelerator Network of small businesses. WCA officials said the company will receive one year of rent-free office space, free professional services, advertising in local media and access to financing and mentoring in the county.
“We hope the accelerator will open doors to local businesses,” said Ronan, a native of Ireland and former nurse in England and at New York City hospitals, where she worked with organ transplant patients. “That”™s our main goal for the Accelerator ”“ access to biotech companies.”
Ronan launched Databean in 2007 as an information technology company that developed TrialPoint, management software for the costly clinical trial phases required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Having worked in clinical trials at private startups and at Columbia University Medical Center, “I was often very frustrated,” she said. “I decided I could do it better on my own.”
The IT company leased office space in downtown White Plains before moving to its 1,200-square-foot office in Mount Vernon at the start of 2012. Databean evolved from its IT roots as demand for its various professional services to life sciences companies ”“ including clinical trial protocol design, management of clinical studies, safety monitoring, statistical analysis and FDA reporting ”“ outpaced the growth of its TrialPoint software business. In 2013, Ronan spun off TrialPoint Inc. with Databean as the primary company.
Databean has largely focused its contracting business on trials for implanted medical devices for end-stage disease management, solid organ transplantation and biologics and pharmaceuticals for immune system modulation. There is low competition in the areas in which Databean has chosen to practice, said Ronan, with two or three other contract research organizations, or CROs, operating in that niche.
One of those competitors, Quintiles Inc., is a Fortune 500 company and the world”™s largest biopharmaceutical services company with 29,000 employees. Databean has eight full-time employees, including two in California.
The very large organizations “end up being quite expensive for the small companies to afford,” Ronan said.
Databean prefers to work with those small startup companies. “We”™re interested in these small companies that have maybe two or three doctors in them and a couple of businesspeople but don”™t have their own team for clinical trials,” she said. “Those are our ideal clients.”
“We don”™t really get too much into the business of a company,” she said. “Our goal is to take that company”™s product and get it out to market only if it proves safe and effective” in clinical trials.
At the time of its pitch to Health Tech contest judges, Databean was managing $8.6 million under contract for clients and had $1.4 million in revenue, with a pipeline of $12.5 million in studies potentially under contract. The company has projected it will be managing approximately $31.6 million under contract by 2016 with $4.9 million in revenue. Projecting 60 percent annual growth over the next five years, it expects to manage $80.9 million of work by 2018, when Databean”™s annual revenue is expected to reach $18.2 million
According to a recent report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch presented in Databean”™s Health Tech pitch, research and development expenditures outsourced to CROs such as Databean amount to $23 billion this year. That global market is expected to grow to $30 billion by 2018.
Ronan said she plans to make contact with biotech incubators where tenant companies do work in end-stage diseases and solid organ transplants. She said Databean might work with New York Medical College in Valhalla, where BioInc@NYMC, a government-funded biotech business incubator, is expected to open this year. In Manhattan, the CRO could tap into Harlem Biospace and KiiLN, or Keystone for Incubating Innovation in Life Sciences – NYC, a business incubator planned for East Harlem and affiliated with Mount Sinai Medical Center.
“We”™re trying to keep it local for our local companies,” Ronan said.
“There”™s a lot going on in technology in New York City,” she said. “I think for the biotech and pharma, it”™s right here in Westchester and going up into the Hudson Valley. I don”™t see a lot of activity in biotech in New York City, but there”™s a lot of activity in Westchester.
“Being in that environment attracts all these other companies,” she said. “That”™s our sweet spot: single-product startup companies.”
While praising the “open, collaborative feel” of Databean”™s office loft in Mount Vernon, Ronan said the company could benefit from being closer to the hub of Westchester”™s biotech industry.
“My ideal location would be anywhere in the biotech space on the Hudson,” she said, especially Biomed Realty Trust”™s Landmark at Eastview campus, where the state”™s largest biotech company, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., is headquartered, and Biomed Realty”™s Ardsley Park life sciences campus, where Acorda Therapeutics Inc. has its headquarters.
